The blackout is something I've never understood in other cities. The waiting list to buy season tickets for the Bears is thousands of people long. The Bulls sellout 90% of their NBA games. The Cubs who are horrible are still Top 10 in baseball attendance. How can an NFL team not fill their stadium???

Here in Tampa, the Bucs had a waiting list for seats several years ago, but not now. Last season, all the home games were blacked out locally. So far this year, both home games were blacked out becuse they couldn't sell 85% of the seats.

I think a lot of it has to do with the down economy. Plus, for the past few years, the Bucs haven't performed well.

They are also having big problems with getting fans to the Tampa Bay Rays games, even when they reach the post-season. Of course, this year, they didn't make it to the post-season.

The Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team does a good job at filling their seats.

HTower wrote:The blackout is something I've never understood in other cities. The waiting list to buy season tickets for the Bears is thousands of people long. The Bulls sellout 90% of their NBA games. The Cubs who are horrible are still Top 10 in baseball attendance. How can an NFL team not fill their stadium???

Cincinnati is a fickle little medium market city. And the Bengals have been a very "unpredictable" pro football team since 1968. The Bengals were at their best early to middle 80's appearing in two Super Bowl losses to Joe Montana and the 49R'S.(82-88) Plus you have a city that is better known for it's pro baseball success being the home of the oldest team in baseball the Cincinnati Reds!

In my opinion/observation the inconsistent win/loss record of the Bengals and the death of owner Paul Brown in 1990 and the ridiculous handling of the Bengals by Mike Brown(Paul's son) has attributed to low attendance since 1990! Mike Brown was so cheap and didn't have a clue in running a successful pro football franchise plus an almost non-existent talent scouting department made many fans re-belle by just not going to the games! This was terrible for us die hard fans as far as being able to watch them on TV. MANY black outs! You had to listen to a radio broadcast or wait till late Sunday night for a re-broadcast on TV!

Year after year Mike Brown would pick "terrible" head coaches and scout terrible athletes and forget about getting any new talent signed and in training camp till half the season was over! You had to have VERY thick skin to be a Cincinnati Bengal's fan trust me!

Mike Brown currently is sluggishly trying to change his ways of doing things. Will the Bengals(Two Super Bowl runner up) ever be as successful as the Steelers(Six Super Bowl wins)...........Sadly, not in my life time. The only true bragging right a Bengals fan can have over the Pittsburgh Steelers is a single game win or division win. We(Bengals fans) cherish that as much as the birth of our first born child!